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Snowboarding Son Save
Location: Crystal Mountain, Washington Date: February 23, 1994 Story A day before February 23, 1994, a large snowstorm swept through the Cascades Mountains in Washington. 65 inches of snow fell in 24 hours and there was avalanche danger in some areas in the mountain range. John Gabbles and his 19-year-old son, Andy, have come up to Crystal Mountain Ski Resort to snowboard. Since Andy had a day off from class, he was determined to snowboard. Unwilling to let him go up the slopes alone due to the conditions from the previous storm, John decided to take a day off from work to go up with him and spend some time with him. "I'm very close with my son. So if Andy wanted to ski or snowboard, that was my opportunity have that kind of time with him," John stated. After snowboarding for awhile, they decided to go down the resort to eat lunch. Andy, who is a pretty aggressive snowboarder, sloped down to the edges of the run as he and John were 40 yards from each other. While sloping on the corner, he went too close to the edge and lost control of his snowboard. He went flying in the trees and landed on the heavy snow. The snow drifts on the treetops above him buried him. John did not see Andy when he turned to corner and he stopped to find him while calling out to him. John sees some trees moving and the snow was falling off of them which was unusual to him and knew something happened to Andy. "I knew that if he was alright, he would answer me. I got this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was very wrong and I needed to get help." 19-year-old Kim Hoffman, a recently graduated EMT and firefighter, happened to be skiing by when John yelled out to her and learned that he can't find Andy since he snowboarded off track. "I figured that it would be really dangerous if he got caught back there because of the amount of snow that we had, he would be buried," Kim stated. She asked another passing skier to get the Ski Patrol up there quickly. John and Kim then searched for Andy through chest deep snow while digging in spots to find any trace of him while yelling out his name. "It was really nerve wrecking. I remember thinking I didn't want to find someone dead that day," Kim recalled. After getting nowhere, Kim decided that they should go up and work their way down. While searching for Andy, more than 15 minutes have past. Kim was feeling around her hands until she felt something hard and found Andy's snowboard. John came up and helped Andy dig himself out. "The moment I saw his snowboard, I feared for the worse. I feared Andy had been under there so long that he wasn't going to make it," John recalled. As John and Kim dug feverishly to extricate Andy from hard, heavy snow, they decided to follow his legs to find the rest of him. The snow was very hard to dig and they had to do so with handfuls. "I didn't have much hope left. The feeling was 'How am I going to go with my life? This is my son and my best friend,'" John admitted. As Kim felt that John was about to give up when she heard him say "Oh my god, I know he's dead.", told him "No, he's not." and keep digging, and that everything would be okay as they found Andy's face underneath the snow. "But I figured he had been buried about 25 to 30 minutes by the time we got to him. With lack of oxygen after four minutes, the brain starts to shut down. Deep in my heart, I thought he was dead. I really did," Kim admitted. As John and Kim talked out to Andy while digging the snow away from him, they heard a noise from him. They saw that he is still clinging to life and John told him to hang in there a little longer. Bill Riplinker was the first member of the Ski Patrol arrive. When he saw how serious Andy's condition was, he called in a Code 1 situation to the Ski Patrol. Few minutes later, Ski Patrol EMT Emily Johnston and paramedic Dick Tolbert arrived. "There's always kind a shock because you'll hope to look down to see someone who is pink and moving and he was none of the above," Johnston stated. Tolbert evaluated Andy and concerned that when he was upside down in the snow he had vomited into his lungs. The stomach contents had aspirated into his lungs and they had to act quickly since the contents would eat away the lungs and lead to his death. Once they dug the snow fully off Andy, the Ski Patrol decided to pull him out of there to the run. "We just had to get him out to where we can resuscitate him if he needed it. You're concerned about spinal and head injury. But none of that really matters if he's not breathing," Johnston recalled. The Ski Patrol pulled Andy out of the snow-covered embankment as John and Kim watched on. "As soon as we moved him to the run, to our disbelief, he started talking to us. He's definitely the bluest person I've ever seen talking in my life," Tolbert stated. "If he hadn't been skiing with his father, no one would have known that he was gone and he would not have been found until sometime in the summer when all the snow had melted," Riplinker stated. Andy was hospitalized for hypothermia and pneumonia. But he has since fully recovered from the incident. "I was really amazed by the battle my dad waged to find me and dig me out. I felt a lot of love between us and I was extremely happy that we were seeing each other again," Andy said. "19 years ago, I gave birth to Andy and his dad was an important part of that delivery. I kind of feel that John was a second birthing on the mountain. So Andy has two birthmothers. Me and his dad," Andy's mother stated. The Gabbles family are thankful to Kim Hoffman for helping to save Andy's life. "I feel extremely grateful for an angel that appeared on the scene when I really needed her. I think Kim is the real hero in this story. If I had gone in there on my own to try to find Andy, I would have not found him in time," John stated. "It was really rewarding because it was the first life I saved. I was surprised how good he looked. He looked a lot better then I day I saw him," Kim happily admitted. "My dad is one of those great fathers who never missed a tee ball game or a football game. I think that his actions proved everybody else what a great person he is," Andy stated. "Every moment I have with my son is bonus time and I looked at him and think 'I'm glad your here. I'm really glad you're here,'" John said. Category:1994 Category:Washington Category:Hypothermia